Ryan gives his opinions on current news events

(When it comes to post titles, I try to strike a delicate balance between "relevant to topic" and "clever". I think the pendulum may have swung a little too far in one direction this time.)

(Also, two posts in one day?!? Ah, that time of year between 'school' and 'summer job'. Of course, I have no idea how long it'll last this year.)

For whatever reason, I've found a lot of recent news items to be fairly interesting. Rather than my normal pattern of "space my thoughts out over the course of a week", I'm just going to do it all at once. And a couple not-so-important things at the end - just like a real newscast! Aren't I clever?

First up, the riots in Montreal. I'm not going to take the "they only advanced to the next round, there shouldn't be riots" route here - while that is true, consensus seems to be that the rioters were not hockey fans (well, not rioting because they were hockey fans), just hooligans thinking it was a good time to stir up some trouble.

To be honest, I'm still kind of shocked at the whole thing. Mostly at where this all went down - I was right there just a month ago! It's still fresh enough in my mind that I can see any footage of the rioting on the news, and know exactly where it was! I wrote here about the atmosphere after the Habs game I went to - unlike anything I'd ever seen, but in a good way. Huge crowds, but all celebrating, even with complete strangers - like a Kitchener Rangers game (during a good year) only about a thousand times more jubilant. It is nearly impossible for me to fathom that the stuff I've seen on television really happened in the exact same place.

Moving on to the next story, Brenda Martin. She's the Canadian who has been imprisoned in a Mexican jail for the past two years, and her case has sparked national outrage. Yesterday, she was found guilty of Internet fraud, and sentenced to five years in jail. With the near certainty of her being transferred to Canada, and our parole system, she will be free to go...very soon.

My question: why is this such big news? And, more importantly, how do we know she's not guilty? Okay, so her parents and friends don't think she's guilty. I realize this is a little extreme of an example, but do you think Paul Bernardo told his parents what he was up to? Or his friends (aside from Karla)? Is it really that hard to imagine that Martin knew she was taking illicit funds, and figured she'd be okay as long as she didn't tell anybody? For all the media coverage this has gotten, I've yet to see anything saying "she didn't do it" - and watching her interviews, I can't say I instinctively trust her.

Speaking of people I distrust, Hillary Clinton is still holding out hope that Barack Obama will say Hitler had some good ideas, or something equally unpopular and unlikely. Her latest attack plan seems to be, and I am not making this up, "he should have won by now". Honestly, I find it hard to believe that she truly believes she can come back to win the race - in which case, the only reason she's staying in it is to divide the party enough that the Republicans win the election, meaning Hillary can run again in 2012. Also, apparently all three candidates (including McCain) were on a WWE show this week. Um...I guess it could be worse? At least they're not all competing on a special episode of "Don't Forget The Lyrics"?

Wikipedia has quietly added a new feature - their search bar now has what I'm going to call a "dynamic dropdown" - as you type, it brings up a box listing all the articles starting with what you've typed. I could see this being a handy invention, except for one glaring problem - it doesn't really help much if your term is of a certain length. When I was working on another post earlier this week, I tried it out - "All Summer Long" gave me about ten results - nine of which read simply "All Summer Long (", as the items in the parentheses weren't visible. Not that helpful.

And finally, a completely unscientific study - conceived, funded, orchestrated, and analyzed by me - has concluded that teal is the funniest colour. Want proof? Try saying these two sentences out loud. "Everybody else was wearing red." "Everybody else was wearing teal." You laughed at the second one, right?

Lots of spare time this week. Look for more to come.

--Ryan